


So Glide Away On Soapy Heels

by chronologicalimplosion



Category: Homestuck, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 11:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronologicalimplosion/pseuds/chronologicalimplosion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark meets a woman over drinks. This isn't particularly unusual. The woman, however, is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dry Martini

**Author's Note:**

> For my lovely friend [Shi](http://lunardaydreams.tumblr.com/). Because she's great and this is something we've shipped quietly together for a while. The rest of you are all welcome.
> 
> I may continue this? Lord knows I've got a lot more to say. But this chapter was sort of difficult to write. Maybe I'm just out of practice with Mom. Who knows; no promises.
> 
> The song in the Interludes and the title is Ingrid Michaelson's "The Chain". I was gonna go with something more rock-and-rollish, but. This just fit. (Also I love this song like breathing.)

It's two in the morning and Tony is pretty drunk. The presentations finished up right around ten and then the cocktail hour started, and by the end of that hour they'd moved from polite talk about science and ideas and possible partnerships to... well, you'd be surprised how good scientists can be at partying, once it gets going.

So Tony Stark extended cocktail hour a little bit.

He can do that.

But now the hours are stretching on and he's a bit too drunk to get much drunker, so when he staggers back to the bar and spots some hips that just don't quit very nicely outlined by a... is that a tailored lab coat? He doesn't plan; he never plans these things when he's this drunk. They just happen, all at once, and he doesn't stop and she doesn't stop and he's had enough trials by now to prove the formula pretty solidly.

“Why hello there, gorgeous,” he gives in lieu of an introduction, not even trying to hide the appreciating sweep of his eyes. She doesn't balk, just gives him a pretty little smile as she swallows the last sip of her drink, and in his mind, he's already won.

“Tony Stark.” Her voice is crisp and sweet and it knows a lot of secrets. In short, it's exactly like her smile, and he's enjoying the thought of that voice going wild and that mouth doing wonderful things that are a lot like words and smiles. “I really must thank you for extending this wonderful shindig. It's been marvelous.”

“Well, what can I say?” He leans against the counter beside her, leaning way into her personal space, and she giggles a little. Like a schoolgirl. She's caught. “Anything to brighten up the night of a lovely lady.”

“Quite the philanthropist all of a sudden.” She summons the bartender as she speaks, and, of course, Tony intercepts him.

“It's on me, whatever this here vision is drinking.”

“Nothing for yourself?”

“Yeah, sure, I'll have one. Some fruity concoction, right?”

“I suppose olives are fruits.”

Suddenly, Tony lights up, the bartender and the promise of yet more alcohol temporarily less interesting than the woman in front of him, prim and proper and giggling as he inserts himself into her space. He wants to make her come undone. “A martini girl!”

“Dry, of course. No need to waste perfectly good gin by weighing it down.”

“Well, aren't you quite the little delectable surprise wrapped up in a lab coat?”

She giggles again. That giggle is going to drive him crazy. He hopes she's ticklish. God, that would just be so perfect. “One must find the proper line between looking presentable and looking like a scientist. One would hardly guess you'd touched a machine in your life if it weren't for the grit underneath your fingernails.” She picks up his hand in two of hers, her skin much paler and much softer and her hands much smaller but the both of them still very steady and strong. She works her fingers over his, massaging them out, and he hums in appreciation.

“Quite the hands you've got there yourself, Miss...” He asks for her name like a good little boy, even though he'll just forget it in the morning.

She considers him for a moment, and then replies “Lalonde.” Her fingers curl his shut when the bartender comes with the drinks.

“What, no first name?” But she just hands him one of the drinks in reply, and they stand there sipping at their martinis, she in a barstool and he leaning against the bar, positions that put them nearly eye to eye, and Tony's quickly getting sick of her composed control over the conversation.

“You are far too coherent for a woman that's been sitting here drinking gin all night.”

“Merely sipping. Though even if I weren't, I've a tolerance that would put yours to shame.”

He leans in a little, eyebrows raised. “Is that a challenge?”

She leans in to meet him, still smiling that maddening smile. “It doesn't take a genius to put that together, Mr. Stark.”

And just like that, when he'd thought he couldn't get any drunker, they're in a drinking contest, slamming down what are basically oversized shots of gin, though after a while it switches to vodka. They're both getting more and more loose-lipped as the rounds tick past, her words less polite and more playful, though there's still always that secret behind it, and no matter how many drinks go down, she won't tell him her name.

“Do I see you having trouble swallowing? Surely the great Tony Stark isn't all bark and no bite.”

“Well, I can think of something sweeter I'd rather be tasting, but this is a very, very close second.”

_~~The sky looks pissed~~_

“You presented that appearify-y thing, right?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“I can think of a few uses I'd have for the deappearify function.” Tony's eyes make it very clear what he's talking about.

“Personally, I'm fond of the old-fashioned way.”

_~~The wind talks back~~_

“You've got a cute butt, y'know?”

“Do I?”

“Yeah. Thanks for not sitting; that'd really be obstructing my view.”

_~~My bones are shifting in my skin~~_

“Y'know I think the bar might finally be clearing out.”

“Aw, forget 'em. A true drinker stops for nothing and no one!”

She giggles at that and they clink their glasses before the next round goes down.

_~~And you, my love, are gone~~_

They're basically an incoherent, giggling mess against the counter, the contest sort of forgotten in the bubbliness of having reached that whole new level of drunk, when something turns over in his Big Impressive Brain and he finally remembers what this whole thing was supposed to be leading up to. He leans in and their lips touch, but the contact with her amazingly soft lips is brief.

“Sorry, Tony.” She suddenly seems much more sober than he can ever remember having been, and his brain turns over trying to process whether it was his kiss that did that or if she was just never that drunk all along.

Shit, did he just lose the drinking contest?

Before he can really work up a response, the space that she'd filled is empty and cold and all that's left is a business card on the counter. He picks it up and there's no first name, just Lalonde and a phone number and the motif of a pink scarf winding around the edges.

By the time she's left him at the bar, there isn't much of anyone left to take home instead, and he feels more bereft and more lonely and more pointlessly drunk than he thinks he ever has.


	2. Vodka Shots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony gets himself very wrapped up in the mystery Lalonde girl and her mysterious science. Very little about her is making much sense at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In a surprising twist of events, this chapter was written for me as a gift by the friend I gifted the first chapter to, [Shi](http://lunardaydreams.tumblr.com/). So I guess now this isn't actually a gift exchange so much as a collaboration, and we're loosely planning on alternating chapters. For a while. But editing and plotting is always done by the both of us so, yeah. She doesn't have an ao3 (to my knowledge), but that doesn't make her any less of the author! She's wonderful; go stop by her blog or something.
> 
> (It also occurs to me that the Chain isn't a very long song and I'm probably going to run out of transition lyrics very soon so if anyone else can think of a good song for these two or knows of any songs about drinking... basically. Yeah. That'd be nice.)

The next morning his memories are clouded with haze, but some things stand out. Her secretive smile, her soft hands and lips, her last name and refusal to share her first, and the business card left with him. Lalonde. The name repeats in his head until his hangover migraine is even worse. He covers his face with his pillow, but speaks through it in a slightly muffled voice.

"Jarvis, I need you to look something up for me."

_"What is it, Sir?"_

"Look up-" but he stops. She'd won the drinking contest, and if he cheats now by using such cheap tactics, she'll have won the unspoken challenge of finding out her first name, too. It would be simple--very, very simple--to just google the first name of a scientist like her with such attention-grabbing technology. And she surely knew that. But if he takes the easy way out and looks it up, he's lost the challenge, and he's not sure his ego can take another hit like that. Distracted, he frowns into the pillow, forgetting for a moment that he'd been talking to Jarvis. "Not losing that easily..." he mumbles to himself. She's made a fool of him, and nobody makes a fool of Tony Stark.

_"Sir?"_

"Sorry Jarvis, it's nothing."

_"Is something wrong?"_

"Nope. Nothing."

_"You wanted me to look something up, sir?"_

He hesitates, then a plan formulates as he unburies his head from his expensive feather pillow and picks up the business card from his end table. _Dr Lalonde_ , it said, of Skaianet Systems Incorporated. It’s got a number on it, with no further explanation, and he only humors the idea of calling it for half a second because this isn’t a normal girl and clearly he can do better than that. It’s probably just Skaianet’s general number anyways, or her office’s, and he’s not about to talk to secretaries.

"Skaianet, huh... Jarvis, look up upcoming conferences where Skaianet Systems Incorporated will be presenting."

_"There are thirty six in the next month."_

"Thirty six? Showing up at different events on the same day, huh?"

_"So it would seem."_

"Check which of these include the words 'appearify' or 'appearification'," He heads to the bathroom, brushing his teeth to clear the leftover taste of alcohol from his mouth. The hangover is making his head pound, and he hopes Pepper's remembered to buy more of the good kind of hangover medicine.

_"Ten, sir."_

"The next one?"

_"Tomorrow in Indiana."_

"Book me a plane, will you?" He opens the medicine cabinet, finding, to his dismay, that the medicine of the gods is nowhere to be found. "And find a pharmacy on the way that sells that hangover medicine I like."

_"Of course."_

_~~My room seems wrong; the bed won't fit~~_

The first three are a bust. No sign of Lalonde, just various other scientists talking about the technology. Now that he's a mite more sober, it's occurring to him that he seriously overlooked its potential. Whoever designed this stuff is a genius on a level maybe even comparable with himself, as much as he doesn't want to admit it. It's years ahead of its time, silly name aside.

He has a feeling he knows who its inventor is, but he won't make any bets yet; not until he at least knows her name. He's torn between hoping it's her and hoping it's not her because inventing this kind of technology would give her yet another edge on their silent and possibly nonexistent battle of wits and wills.

If he’s honest with himself, which doesn't happen terribly often, he'd admit he doesn't even know how this technology works. He's missing something in the equation, something the scientists aren't really explaining, and before too long he's frustratedly staring at the equations wondering _why the fuck won't this make sense_. He’s written and rewritten and moved and shuffled them all several dozen times until the program is covered with indecipherable scribbles, but nada. And somehow, over the next two conferences, as he comes no closer to finding out the missing variables, he's associating this with Lalonde and her challenges, both spoken and unspoken and somehow he is just all the more determined to find out her real name and maybe have a somewhat sober chat with her.

And while he's at it, he'll find out what that variable is.

He almost doesn't believe it when he sees her at the sixth conference at long last. She explains the technology a lot more clearly than the other scientists had, as she takes her place up at the mic and goes through the details of how this technology works and demonstrates by appearifying some things from across the room. All the while, she’s using that clean, taunting voice, but it’s vaguely less distracting because the words she’s saying are incredibly interesting by their own merit.

It fills in some of the blanks, though most of it is stuff he's worked out already, but he's certain now that Lalonde is deliberately leaving some parts out as she explains this. Moreover, something is not _right_ about this technology in a way he's not really sure how to describe. It’s mildly satisfying to have his personal discoveries confirmed by Lalonde herself, but it’s still going to drive him crazy if he doesn’t figure it out soon.

He follows her with his eyes as she gets down from the stage and goes to the bar. He follows a bit behind, making sure not to lose track of her, as if the moment he looks away she'll disappear into the night again.

She sits down on a barstool, and he goes to lean on the bar, a repeat of their first meeting.

"Hello Mister Stark," she greets with a smile. He watches her black painted lips sip at the martini, leaving a faint smudge mark. He wonders for a moment if the same type of smudge was left on his lips after he kissed her before. He tries to remember what he had been intending to ask her, but in his distraction it takes a moment.

"Interesting presentation, but you left out a few things," he says when he finally gets some portion of his wits back. He drags his eyes away from her lips, up to her eyes, which he realizes are a startling pink. Not every day you see someone with pink eyes. He wonders how drunk he must have been to not remember that the next morning.

"Did I?" She seems neither surprised nor bothered by that fact, taking another sip of the martini.

"You left out some of the math. The equations you gave would never work on their own." He knows. He's tried several times at home, only to end up with the machine exploding after each attempt. Not that he'll mention that part.

"Trying to replicate it and take all our thunder?"

"Oh, don’t bother with the fake concern. It's not really my company's line of work, and I'm sure you've already got the patents worked out. You'll have your time in the limelight for a little while."

"Only a little while?"

"Stark Industries will come out with something to blow your projects out of the water." Maybe he's a little bitter. Just a bit. He's not used to coming second in the up and coming technology business, even if he does make weapons, not teleporters.

"Doubt it," there's a sly smirk on those distracting black painted lips of hers. "That's only what we've released to the public so far. We have several more things in testing that will make your latest weapon look like a super computer next to an abacus.”

The most alarming thing about that is that something in her words really convinces him, though it may be a slight exaggeration. Or at least he really hopes so.

"And what are these world-shattering things in testing?"

She just smiles and takes another sip of her drink. Doing his best not to show his frustration, he orders a martini of his own. "How about another friendly competition?" He suggests. "I’d already had a lot to drink last time, so it wasn't really fair. This time we're both on our first drink."

"Sounds like fun," she smirks at him. He's not sure if she's flirting or teasing or both. It looks like flirting, but she'd pulled away from his kiss last time. It hadn’t been a big show of shoving him away and slapping him, though, and just like that she already has him tangling his mind up in another one of her puzzles.

They go through their second drink before he brings up the things on his mind again. He's tempted to ask her name outright, but he's neither sure she'd give it or ready to lose the challenge.

Tony's not a patient man, and the gin is making him even less so, but he bites back the questions he's dying to ask. They make more smalltalk, trying to glean bits of information to help him guess, or know what to look for that doesn't include the search terms 'Lalonde' and 'Appearifier' or 'Skaianet' in one go. Asking her age gets a mockingly affronted look and a "don't you know it's rude to ask a lady her age?" and asking which lab location she works at earns him an "it's top secret."

He's no closer to finding out anything of use. Curiosity keeps burning away at him and clashing with stubborn, stubborn pride. Pride is winning for now, but some part of him wonders how long that will last.

"So, how long have you worked for Skaianet?"

"Since I was twelve."

His eyebrow raises. "Aren't there labor laws?"

"Possibly." She downs the rest of her drink, and looks at her watch. "Sorry, Tony, I'll have to cut this short."

"What?" He sits upright in a tiny bit of alarm. He has not gotten anywhere closer to finding answers as far as he's concerned and it took him forever to track her down once.

She just smiles, "My daughter has a recital tomorrow. Can't miss it, can I?"

His mind skips a little at the word 'daughter'. It gives her enough time to slip into the crowd before he can stand up and try to figure out which way she went.

Daughter, huh? He'd never gone for any mothers before. He didn't think she was old enough to be one. Not one that could play piano, definitely.

He supposes it doesn't really matter. It’s not like he has to meet the kid, even presuming he ever manages to get past the one incredibly short and drunken kiss.

Maybe if he manages to get past first base she'll finally tell him about the appearifier, too.


End file.
